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How To: Our Wedding Gallery Wall

I hope you all had a great weekend! I decided to take the entire weekend off my computer, which meant I couldn't prep for a Monday blog post. It was much needed! But here I am today with a peek into our place. If you follow along on Instagram, then you may have seen the sneak peek of my new gallery wall in our apartment. I've had the frames for months and just got our wedding pictures in the mail about 2 weeks ago, about an HOUR before guests were arriving for a party at our house. I decided "why the heck not hang an entire gallery wall before everyone arrives?!" Ha ;) Thankfully I've done this a time or two, so it worked out. Here's what I did:

1. Before I ordered the wedding pictures, I put together this mock up to play around with which pictures I wanted printed, the gallery wall placement and which picture would go in each frame. I tried to choose one or two that showed the venue and the trees, one close up of our faces, and one showing the back of my dress. Another requirement was my beautiful flowers being the star of the show ;) That top right picture frame will actually have a watercolor painting of my bouquet in it by my super talented friend Chelsea. She is AMAZING and I can't wait to have my flowers, by Michelle Lywood, preserved in that way!

In thinking about the placement of the frames, I wanted to create balance, but not have it be symmetrical (which you couldn't do with 5 frames of different sizes anyways!) You can see I put both the heaviest frames on opposite sides from one another to spread out the visual weight.

2. I traced the gallery wall frames then cut them out of kraft paper so I could tape them to the wall. I made sure to draw an arrow and write "up" so I knew which way that particular frame would hang (due to what picture was going in which frame).

3. Next I started the hanging process.

To get the picture frames hung in the spot you want them, without putting multiple holes in the wall (ha!), you want to measure from the top of the frame to the bottom of the little picture hanging hook.

It's so hard to get non-glaring pictures of this wall because all of our windows are pouring light right onto the frames and the glass is apparently very reflective. Sorry!

I can't wait to get that watercolor painting of my flowers to finish off the gallery wall. I should mention, I love these frames. They are great if you have both silver and gold decor, because they are more of a champagne finish, which goes with anything. I'm so happy with how it turned out! We don't have a ton of wall space in our apartment, so I'm happy this collection of special memories could fit.